Yesterday I had the displeasure of reading Gregory Ferenstein’s column, “Why the web benefits liberals more than conservatives.” Ferenstein’s thesis is that liberal ideological characteristics facilitate Internet success, while the opposite is true for conservatism. Frankly, his entire piece is based on assumptions without evidence. Ferenstein states:

From…the million-strong Barack Obama Facebook page to the huge audience of the Huffington Post, liberals have been the dominant political force on the internet since the digital revolution began.”

Ferenstein avoids the most important reason for this phenomenon: Age. Younger people dominate the Internet, and younger people are more liberal by significant margins. So, Ferenstein could replace the phrase, “Liberals have been the dominant political force on the Internet since the digital revolution began,” with “Young people have been the dominant demographic on the Internet since the digital revolution began.” They have the same meaning.

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He continues:

Research…suggests that the reason behind this imbalance may be the liberal belief system itself.

Liberals, the research finds, are oriented toward community activism…and feature user-generated content. Conservatives…are more comfortable with a commanding leadership and use restrictive policies to combat disorderly speech in online forums.

Even the study concedes that several conservative blogs allow user-generated content, and several liberal blogs do not. If we assume that restrictive commenting policies are uniquely conservative, then we wouldn’t expect liberal blogs to be run the same way. Moreover, conservative blogs like Redstate.com and FreeRepublic.com allow an enormous amount of user-generated content, which according to Ferenstein, goes against conservatism. Someone should notify Erick Erickson that he’s a CBINO (Conservative Blogger in Name Only).

Ferenstein then disqualifies his argument from being taken seriously when he fixates on HotAir.com:

The Huffington Post’s [“HP”] closest conservative competitor, Hotair.com, has only a fraction of its audience size and is tightly controlled by an inner circle of three authors… Hot Air was founded by Michelle Malkin…Malkin’s hard-line national security views are matched by Hotair’s unusually restrictive comment policy. The site permits comments only by registered users.

First, Malkin rarely blogged for HotAir.com. Ed Morrissey and the blogger known as AllahPundit do. Malkin was simply affectionately known as the “Boss Emeritus” until HotAir.com was acquired recently by Salem Communications. I’m dumbfounded that Ferenstein makes the logical jump from her national security positions to HotAir’s comment policy. Other large conservative blogs with similar policy positions, like Ace of Spades HQ, allow comments without registration. Conversely, the Daily Kos bans such people from commenting.

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Furthermore, comparisons with HP are misleading. It has a larger audience than HotAir because it pays for Associated Press content, has numerous full-time employees to run the site, and, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t pay its bloggers a penny. Ferenstein’s analysis of HP gets even more bizarre:

By contrast, the left-leaning [HP]…has thousands of bloggers and invites active users to become featured authors and comment facilitators…Thus, from just a snapshot of the top political bloggers, one catches a glimpse of an emerging pattern: leadership and control from the right, and equality and community on the left.

It was only recently that HP invited users to become featured comment facilitators. Previously, HP moderated comments heavily. So, whatever success HP has achieved, it cannot be attributed to its new comment facilitators. Also, I’m a regular reader of HP and I’ve never seen an active user become a featured author.

Towards the end, Ferenstein contradicts himself by addressing the Scott Brown victory:

Indeed, conservative Scott Brown’s stunning victory…took its strategy from Obama’s playbook…Brown permitted an unknown universe of latent conservative activists to contribute as they saw fit.

Right, so the Tea Party movement via decentralized networks managed to get Scott Brown elected. This disputes everything Ferenstein said about conservatives needing a hierarchal structure. Scott Brown even has similar foreign policy stances to Malkin. I thought according to Ferenstein that a “hard-line” foreign policy position would lead to a top-down approach to campaigning?

Finally, Ferenstein addresses the fact that youth dominate the Internet, but fails to draw the correct conclusion that, that is the reason for the phenomenon of liberals also dominating the Internet.

Russell J. Dalton… says that among politically active youth, liberals are substantially more likely to donate money, attend a rally and participate in online discussions…Dalton writes…[T]he very structure of the internet as a decentralized grouping of communities may never appeal to the large portion of right-wingers who prefer military-style hierarchies and commanding leaders.

So either the Tea Party doesn’t show up on Ferenstein’s radar, or the Tea Party is not a conservative movement.

Overall, Ferenstein ignores the obvious fact that younger—and by extension more liberal—people dominate the Internet, which explains liberal blogs’ popularity. But it has nothing to do with liberal ideology itself.